What's Best Forgotten
by GakuenAlicefan27
Summary: Call closed the door and went back to the bed, peeking inside the box. To his surprise, there were letters there. Old letters, with yellowed out envelopes and dates from more than a decade and half ago. And they all said the same thing: From Constantine, to Master Rufus - Or: Seven letters that never reached their destination, and one that, unfortunately, did.


A/N: This fic has been in my mind for a while, but I have been writing it very slowly. Now it's done and I finally like how it turned out. I hope you do too.

I also published this on AO3 (username: MidnightHalo27)

This fic is not compliant with The Bronze Key.

Disclaimer: The Magisterium book series belongs to Cassandra Clare and Holly Black, not me.

Reviews, kudos, etc are awesome! Constructive criticism is very welcome, but flames will be used to roast marshmallows.

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 **What's Best Forgotten**

 _by: GakuenAlicefan27_

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 _"May you never forget what it's worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten." Irish Proverb_

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"What are you doing here?!" Call yelled, looking at the lizard climbing up his bedroom's wall.

Warren didn't stop until he had reached the ceiling, from where he looked at Call while upside down. "Are you not happy to see Warren? You were the one who let Warren go in the first place."

Call had half a mind to throw a rock at the elemental and sick Havoc on him, but he breathed in deep and counted to ten instead. Like it or not, Warren always seemed to know important stuff, and Call needed any information he could get.

"I'll ask again." He said, glaring at him. "What are you doing here?"

"A gift."

"What?"

The lizard inclined his head and nodded towards Call's bed, where a small box lay. "Warren brought you a gift."

Call's heart started thumping. He clenched and unclenched his hands, looking at the box but making no move to grab it. He didn't trust Warren at all, and with the way his life was, it could very well be a bomb or something.

"Why would you bring me anything?" He asked.

"Not from Warren." The elemental answered. "A fancy-looking ma'am paid Warren to do it, and Warren will say no more." And with that, he scurried towards a hole in the wall and disappeared.

Call screamed after him, but he was already gone. With a frustrated groan, he used earth magic to close the hole, least something else decided to crawl through it.

He took a few cautious steps towards the bed and looked at the box warily. It looked harmless enough, and Call would never know what was inside if he didn't open it.

With a shaky inhale, Call braced himself, opened the lid and ran all the way back to the door.

Nothing happened.

Call breathed out, relieved. Not a bomb then.

He closed the door and went back to the bed, peeking inside the box. To his surprise, there were letters there. Old letters, with yellowed out envelopes and dates from more than a decade and half ago.

He rummaged through the ones in the surface and his breath hitched. They all said the same thing:

 _From Constantine, to Master Rufus_

With shaking hands, he checked the lid of the first one. It was closed. He grabbed another, and another, and so on. They were all closed.

For a minute, he just stood there not knowing what to do, but quickly enough he had started organizing the letters in chronological order, older ones first.

He opened the first one and read it quickly, like one would rip off a band aid, nearly stumbling over the words.

 _I'm tired, Master Rufus. I don't want to do this anymore._

 _I'm tired, but I'm also selfish. I can't bring myself to end things. I fear dying and never being reunited with my brother, for he surely isn't in hell and that's where I am headed._

 _I dug this hole, and I can't get out of it; it shall be my grave, someday._

Call stared at it. If he focused hard enough, he could feel an echo of familiarity, but at the same time, the image Call had built of Constantine in his head didn't match with this.

He felt a stab of sadness in his chest, but ignored it. He moved to the next letter.

 _Every day I stop and wonder just what it is I'm doing. It's been years, Master Rufus, but I'm still a boy – or better yet, a shadow of a boy that never grew up right._

 _I can't find it in myself to care though. Not when my brother didn't grow up at all._

Call gripped the letter so tight he nearly tore at the paper. He re-read the first and second letters over and over again.

The Enemy of Death was supposed to be cold and ruthless, but the man who wrote this just sounded incredibly miserable.

He shook his head to try and will these thoughts away, then grabbed the third letter.

 _I feel sad for the girl Makar. She's young and untrained, and the desperation that fuels her is not gonna be enough to keep her alive. The mages look at her with hope and awe, as if she was sent from above to end their worries. Their expectations will destroy her, little by little, until she's destroyed for good in the battlefield._

 _I don't say it to spite anyone, I hope you know that. That's just the way it is._

 _Innocence is always the first to go._

Call thought of Verity Torres, killed in a war she had been thrown into; her decapitated head now a token guarding a door. He thought of Aaron, who had started having frequent episodes of passing out from stress, anxiety growing every day. He thought of History and its damned tendency of repeating itself because people just don't fucking learn.

Call resisted the urge to tear the letter apart. He took a deep breath and looked at the fourth letter. If he didn't read it, the need to know what had been written would gnaw at him forever, but at the same time he was terrified that he'd end up reading something that would have been better forgotten. He already had so much guilt eating at him, was it so bad that he just wanted to live the rest of his life in peace?

He had always been too curious for his own good. He grabbed the letter. It had been written nearly a year after the last one, while the previous ones all had a space of months between them:

 _I should have died, Master Rufus. It should have been me, not him._

Call covered his hands with his face. This was not fair. Couldn't Constantine just sound like an evil overlord like he had thought he would?

The next letter was another blow to his heart.

 _I heard Declan had a close call. You might not believe it, but I'm glad he made it out alive._

 _I heard Alastair and Sarah had a baby boy. Heard his middle name is William. You must feel proud._

 _Joseph had a son, too; a tiny little thing that's overly attached to his plush pony. It feels weird watching Joseph hold him and play with him. It almost seems like the man has a heart._

Call swallowed a lump down his throat. He thought: Don't cry. Don't scream. Don't cry. Don't scream. Don't cry. Don't scream. There were only two letters left now. He could do this.

 _I wish I could forget everything. I wish I could have a fresh start._

His hands began to shake. A horrible thought sprung in his mind, but he told himself he was wrong. These words didn't mean anything. They were just a way to vent, nothing else. It was just a coincidence.

He grabbed the last letter. It was the shortest one.

 _I'm sorry._

It sounded like good-bye.

Call looked at the date. It was of a few days before The Cold Massacre.

Just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a coincidence, just a…

He grabbed his pillow and screamed into it until he was hoarse. When he was done, he ripped all the letters to shreds and threw the box against the wall, not caring that anyone might hear the noise and come check.

There were two thumps instead of one.

He looked in the box's direction and saw that a piece had come apart. When he went to grab it, he realized it was a false bottom.

A false bottom hiding another letter.

With his heart on his throat, Call grabbed it. The date was the same as the last one he had read.

But it didn't say _to Master Rufus_.

It said _to me._

Before he even knew what he was doing, Call had already ripped it open.

 _I hope you never read this, because if you do, that can only mean you know who you really are, and that's something I don't ever want you to know._

 _If you do know though, please don't make the same mistakes again._

 _And if it's not too much to ask, could you please deliver these letters to Master Rufus? I never gathered the courage to send any of them, but I hope you're stronger than me, and if I know him, he'll want to read them, even if just for closure._

 _Have a better life._

Call threw up.

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A/N: Constantine knowing exactly what he was doing going to La Rinconada must be one of my oldest headcanons. I'm glad I finally wrote something about this.

A little something that I never got to explain in the fic: The Ma'am who payed Warren was Anastasia. When Constantine and Jericho were little, they had a secret spot in the house - a loose tile in the bedroom floor - in which they hid things they didn't want their parents to find. When Constantine wrote the letters, he hid the box in that secret spot, figuring that if his future incarnation were to remember him, he'd know where to look in case he wanted the letters. Little did he know, Anastasia always knew about that secret spot, and found the box some time after The Cold Massacre. She decided to get the box to Call as a way of making him feel better seeing that Constantine was not completely heartless. But she didn't know about the false bottom, and that it had a letter that would make Call feel worse. She doesn't even know that Constantine went to La Rinconada with the intention of getting a restart.

I hope you liked it!

I always love to discuss anything Magisterium related. You can find me on tumblr as agarotado27dejunho


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